Tag Archives: Meditation

Recently I had occasion to do the math on how long I have been meditating daily. Of course the number of days is listed via widget on the very site, but I wanted to be able to state it in years. I’ve been meditating for a bit over 7 years and 4 months. Whew! The reason was someone had asked on Facebook for opinions about meditation. I offered mine, and was immediately embroiled in a conversation about why I was wrong. It was quite amusing.

Meditation is a very personal thing. I do happen to think there is a set of activities that qualify as meditation, and as well as a set of activities that do not. That being said, it takes on flavors as needed for each individual practitioner. I feel it’s important to honor that distinctiveness. If we don’t, it’s all to easy to fall into fundamentalism in our practice.

For myself there is a good working definition of meditation. It’s lightweight enough to allow for variance between the needs and proclivities of the practitioner. It also has enough structure to not drift into allowing anything to fit. To come up with it I held firm to the philosophical guideline of, “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” This definition is what I tell everyone who asks my advice on meditation.

Here it is – Meditation is staying in one place, for a stated duration of time, moving as little as possible, attending to the contents of the actual moment and situation of the practice period.

Like I said – simple. The one thing I add to this definition, as advice for beginning meditators, is this: The only way to do meditation wrong is to not meditate. As far as I am concerned, if you are intentionally doing something that fits at all into the definition I gave, you are meditating. Once you’ve got a regular practice going (whether that’s once a day, twice a week, or once a month) there are refinements we can get to. Until you’ve got a regular practice going, this bare minimum is sufficient.

As for whether people should meditate, I’ll leave you with this quote by a Zen master, “Everyone should meditate for ten minutes a day. If you are too busy to meditate ten minutes a day, then you should meditate for one hour a day.”

Interested in meditation? Let’s chat about it.

Today, I am taking a suggestion from Teresa (who commented and made a request over at 1000dayvow.com), and writing in a general way about my experiences with meditation to ground some possible expectations.

One thing that is up for debate is exactly what meditation is. In my opinion, like so many things in life, there is no one thing that meditation is.

This would be my current working definition: Meditation means taking time to be consciously with your self.

It seems to me that all of us, to one extent or another, and with differing degrees depending on the occasion, navigate through life primarily through heuristics. We learn short cuts that we can rely on (more or less) to help us cope with the sometimes overwhelming amount of information that life can present us with. When dealing with all of that, it can get easy to forget the original source of a particular short cut, and keep using it past it’s due date. We can also loose ourselves behind a set of easy assumptions about what & who we are.

Meditation gives us a chance to cut through that.

By sitting consciously with our own being, keeping our awareness strong, focused, and present, we begin to peak past the wall of habits and presumptions. We can examine where we operate purely mechanically, and where we get creative. We can differentiate between what was installed by others, and what we came to ourselves. The meditation practitioner gets the chance to make informed choices as to which habits to keep, and which ones to discard or revamp.

In one version of the Buddha’s story, he did exactly this. When under the Bodhi tree, exploring the middle path he came to see the trends that were running his life. Some of those had negative connotations. By becoming consciously aware of those negative impulses, he was able to re-wire his system for more positive impulses. In one formulation, it is said that he saw that behind every negative action was a positive impulse. If that positive impulse could be exhumed from the layers of habit, examined, and honored, then the same actions could result in positive consequences. Yelling at a child to save them from grabbing something hot goes from a punishment and an infliction, to an act of compassion. The scream of derision and blame becomes a shout of warning and love.

All of that is imminently possible with meditation, and this shows just one of the many benefits that can come from the practice.

To get more on point with what I think Teresa was asking though, I will share some of my specific experiences.

Let me start by saying that it’s a vast area of exploration. The amount going on in the inner space, as far as I can tell, rivals all of what’s going on in outer space. I am not talking about just our immediate occupancy. I mean all of reality. In a way, each of us seems to be not only a mirror of reality, but in a sense a full version of it. The clearer you can make that mapping of the inner space to match the outer space, the less bumpy the ride.

In my time on the meditation cushion I have had lots of wild rides. I’ve also had sessions that were barely removed from naps. My favorite times are the ones with no fanfare and simple plain attention.

I’ve twitched and spasmed and moved to internal energies balancing themselves.

I’ve been taken on tours “back stage” of reality by a threesome of energetic beings who have been visiting me since I was 12.

I’ve had plenty of lower back and knee pain. (Remember to stretch!)

I’ve ceased to exist as a personal noun.

I’ve cried, and laughed like a fiend.

I’ve doubted that anything good would ever come out of the practice.

I’ve been assailed by thoughts galore!

I’ve seen the source of hundreds of my habits and been able to (slowly!!!) modify them over time.

In the eternal wisdom of RAW, I’ve seen beyond doubt what a Cosmic Schmuck I can be. (Often!)

I’ve spoken to myself when I was a frightened child, soothed the historical pain, and let that child sleep safely.

I’ve been to places I was afraid I would never come back from. (Pro tip: Go further! Safety is one more step.)

And through it all, there I was. Before, during, and after.

In a sense, meditation is like going to a movie, either one that you have not seen before, or one of your favorites. No matter how many trailers you’ve seen, or how many times you’ve seen the movie before, you have not seen this play of that movie until you go see it. Once you do you may be swept away on an existential roller coaster with mighty peaks, and abyss like depths. Through it all, it’s just a movie, and when the timer rings (or the incense burns out, or the audio track ends, or whatever you use to demarcate your practice) you will be there and the movie will be a memory.

I want to also say that I categorically deny that meditation is a path to awakening in itself. Meditation gives us a skill, and an opportunity. It can also be a support structure for awakening. There can be awakening openings that occur during meditation, but as far as I can tell there is not really a causal connection. Meditation provides a context, and an equanimity, with which to come to terms with our awakening.

Those are my ruminations on meditation for today! I hope you enjoyed them!

Have you ever woke up in the morning, aware but not of what or who you are?

Have you found yourself spontaneously wrestling with the compression of time at relativistic speeds, watching space-time map out in four dimensions that your mind can sort of grasp, but can’t translate into the daily run-of-the-mill mapping available to conventionally recognized senses?

Have you been thrashing with sharp bursts of energy from inside, like electrical shocks that are intense but not painful?

Have you watched your self-story fall screaming into oblivion, only to re-appear a moment later as it tries to gain purchase for the day?

Have you smiled as you acknowledged that the price of a body-brain system is a self-story, and even though it seems possible to work the system into a shape where such a story doesn’t appear to occur, it seems like that would be a lot less of a fun trip?

Have you watched the whole play from a place beyond the whole subject/object circus?

A place so bright that it burns everything seen into a dim vision by comparison?

Have you longed to share that vision with just one other person, but recognized that all you can ever do with words is talk about what you see, which is never that which is seen?